#coinagefission

From a Breath and Blood perspective, I know we have the example of an Heir, John, taking every quest/job/direction (Breath) offered up to him and running with it but resisting whenever he was told to "stop". Del'fi, as potentially a Bard of Blood with a complicated relationship with the aspect of Responsibilities, seems apt to be a bit more unpredictable, especially with Bard at the head of the mix. And they've shown quite the oppositional, defiant streak so far.

Gosh, Jake, when did you get so bossy and impatient?

> Sorry is this supposed to matter at all? If nothing fun is going to happen then just install the damn game already! Tally hop fucking to it.

Of COURSE Rose's squiddle race uses their Blood blood as ink, even digitally. It's too edgy for her to pass up! Lalonde's just, indulged all of her wildest childlike edgy fantasies with the Nymph race, hasn't she? Which I suppose is sort of the point.

Onto gothic mirrors too.

> CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FUCKER THREW HIS OWN PHONE ON THE FLOOR AND CLAIMED HE DROPPED IT SO THAT I'D GO PICK IT UP, JUST SO HE COULD KEEP BEING A PAIN IN YOUR ASS? ANYWAYS SORRY AGAIN, APPARENTLY THIS DIPSHIT IS COOL WITH REWATCHING 'MEET DAVE' FOUR TIMES BUT IS TOO INCURIOUS TO SIT BACK AND SEE WHERE THINGS GO? RATHER SAD, ISN'T IT?

I have to believe that Brain Ghost Dirk has been working Jake up into a frenzy or something for him to be this backseaty. *clicks*

They're drawing...

> He says as if he hasnt been fogging up the monitor while pushing you to indulge in these homoerotic arts. A high horse to saddle just to beat around the bush wouldnt you say little lady?

Karkat's been eminently reasonable in my opinion, if a little verbose. *clicks*

Oh no, the arguing is getting a little distracting, even for Del'fi.

> OBVIOUSLY YES BUT FOR FUCK'S SAKE LET'S TRY TO PLAY IN A SLIGHTLY MORE NUANCED SPACE AND LEARN SOME SHIT ORGANICALLY. EVER HEARD OF ENVIRONMENTAL STORYTELLING? THIS LITTLE MONSTER WILL REVEAL THIS WORLD'S SECRETS IN DUE TIME, RIGHT DEL'FI?

They look about to snap their quill. I wonder if the way Jake keeps gendering them is causing them subconscious irritation.

> For a boy so lovely he sure is persnickety isnt he my girl! He cant embrace that at some point you have to put the foot before the pussy and take what you want! Watch and learn Delfi: explain alien romance system.

Good god these two simply can NOT shut up! You're used to catching occasional psychic missives from power-hungry crones who attempt to delve down in pursuit of your prisoner's power, but this is the most obnoxious it's ever been! It's as if these two were made in a lab specifically to torture you.

Hm, so the Lightseed is a prisoner? Or the power a prisoner possesses? Or are they unrelated?

It makes sense that a Knight of Blood might aggravate a Bard of Blood, but as certain as I am of the title, how might Page of Hope specifically make the mix more volatile? Could I have the class wrong? Oh, though the only other example of a Bard given significant screentime had special relationships with both the Knight and Page of his session. Maybe classpect has little to do with this, it's mostly dunking on the dynamic these two busybodies have, it'd drive almost anyone up the wall.

To shut them up, you open up TRENCH2PEAK. It's a multiplayer life-sim romance actionRPG sandbox game that you've been playing a lot for the past lap or so, another secret cross-net initiative for the few brave souls of each species who chose to circumvent the mutual isolation pact in their noble pursuit of ONLINE GAMING.

I'm not sure what the pun is here that relates this to any other online multiplayer game, but it's definitely designed to bridge the gap between Nymphs and Centaurs from the name of it.

You've set up a pretty complicated private server that you and CT have been using as one of the many fronts in your campaign of epic collaborative storytelling, which has the dual advantage of allowing you to install even crazier mods than the native game supports and keeping CT away from any of the few other players, who might inadvertently alert him to your non-terrestrial nature and ruin everything forever. It's a janky piece of junk, but that's only to be expected of something with a userbase that hasn't exceeded 108 concurrent players in tens of laps, and as one of the only pieces of media available to satyrs and nymphs that actively tries to explore and educate about the nuances of the respective opposite species. You're kind of obsessed with it.

Sounds like a Space-Station-13-like turbo-niche, and emphasizes how oppositional and isolated the races have been from each other even at peace, even harassing each other across the various dual 'nets. Maybe "explain alien romance system" is actually going to be elucidated on here despite Del'fi's opposition to the voices, practically without realizing they're doing so. I imagine it was probably some of the requests in that request thread too from last update, I can't recall exactly, it's been a while since I combed through it.

This game gets coo coo crazy, but it sounds like the two voices in your head right now don't know poop from pee so you figure maybe if you put the satyr tutorial on for them they'll shut up long enough for you to be able to concentrate on finishing drawing this dang slop! You boot up a new game and let the intro cutscenes play.

Oh, huh! Guess we might be getting the Satyr side after all.

===>

That looks like some Sims / Second Life BS.

WELCOME TO TRENCH2PEAK. YOU HAVE BEGUN A CAMPAIGN AS: A SATYR Satyrical civilization is predicated on what they call THE TWIN PRINCIPLES. Those principles are MERIT and FRATERNITY, and just about everything you need to know about these fascinating muscle-men boils down, in one way or another, to either or both of these two principles, which are reflected in satyrs at both the societal and genetic level.

I do have to say again that making it so anything pertaining to the Satyr race would be described as "Satyrical" is both incredibly inspired and incredibly Dirk Strider.

MERIT can be defined in many ways, but it has always historically been understood to mean EXCELLENCE. Satyrs are, above almost anything else, encouraged and expected to exceed in all they pursue, or at the very least to exceed in the endeavors that they have chosen to most define themselves by. Are you an athlete? You'd better be up at the crack of dawn on that #grindset. Are you a poet? Crank out five sonnets a day or you're not serious about this shit. Are you a chef? Your dishes better give anyone who eats them a damn Rodeotouille flashback. MERIT can be demonstrated in a variety of ways, but they all more or less boil down to this: you should be trying to be the absolute best you can be, and to settle for anything less is a waste of your potential. Competition amongst satyrs is fierce, a natural byproduct of this unquenchable thirst for victory. Never forget, you are the project that never ends.

This very much mirrors Dirk's view on the honing/perfection of the Self/Heart, the carving out of whatever doesn't suit his ideals of perfection and "manliness", et cetera.

FRATERNITY, by contrast, is a concept that has evolved more fluidly alongside satyrical civilization and taken on many different forms over thousands of laps, but its core emphasis has always remained a dedication to your fellow satyr. Just as any man worth his salt lick is expected to strive for personal greatness, so too is he expected to strive for the betterment of those around him and revel in their company. After all, what's success without a cohort of thriving brothers to share it with? For millennia, FRATERNITY has been exemplified by the FRATERNITY SYSTEM, the planetwide network of differently-specialized scientific, artisanal, and artistic communes satyrs spend the majority of their lives in, but FRATERNITY is applicable to personal friendships, one's duty to society as a whole, and even romantic relationships. Never forget, you are not alone.

This, on the other hand, is very much something Dirk grew up without and yearned for. He seems to have handcrafted a civilization where nobody would be alone. And fostering the spirit of cooperation... that seems actually most notable in the ways it differs dramatically from Nymph civilization. Rose Lalonde created a race of people who, seemingly, may be just as liable to kill and eat each other as collaborate meaningfully outside of mysterious, plotting cabals. She was given an escape from the semi-loneliness of her former life, but in being cut away from Kanaya by Dirk's mental manipulation, it almost seems like she's projected out her own loneliness like shattered glass, eagerly taking up the oppositional position to the principles Dirk was forging.

Together, THE TWIN PRINCIPLES serve to both galvanize and stabilize satyrical civilization. MERIT drives satyrs to improve themselves relentlessly and to seek success, acclaim, and self-betterment, while FRATERNITY keeps satyrs from turning on each other in their pursuit of greatness, channeling all the potency MERIT cultivates into productive collaboration. This MERITORIOUS FRATERNITY further serves to produce an environment of spirited yet supportive competition, and results in the development of FRATERNAL MERIT, an individual strength only possible by keeping the company of other high achievers. Strong men produce good times, good times produce strong men. Thusly do THE TWIN PRINCIPLES recursively propel satyrical civilization towards PEACE, PROSPERITY, and PRs. At least for the most part.

Dirk takes the inherent... well, homosexuality of toxic male ideals and instead embraces an ideal of masculinity where men, well, embrace in every sense of the term. As much as he may try to sand off the isolating rough edges from "masculinity" and the seeking thereof, though, the obsession with achievement and excellence is inevitably going to lead to some friction where even your closest friends are also seen as competitors. There's a high likelihood that the entire Satyr race is culturally sick from its masculine obsessions, Satyrs turned into islands by the specter of being potentially viewed as not enough. I'm gathering from the way this is going, however, that the Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵ system might help stabilize rivalry in a similar way that Kismesis may have for trollkind? Not completely, but partially?

===>

A whole ton of hilarious fake Sims-like screenshots here. They've thrown in UI boxes and icons from a whole ton of different games here to try and cram in as much as possible for the laughs, I see what might be FF14 HP/MP bars, I'm sure there are a ton of other elements other people might recognize.

SATYR ROMANCE: Just as society at large is guided by THE TWIN PRINCIPLES in an attempt to channel its ambitious momentum in a positive direction, so too is SATYR ROMANCE a codified method of ensuring that each romantic relationship is in itself a productive and harmonious unit. However, the relationship roles are not called THE MERITORIOUS and THE FRATERNAL, because that would be dumb. Instead, SATYR ROMANCE gets a little more complicated.

Yup, time for the Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵ / Omegaverse explanation.

There are three relationship roles codified in traditional SATYR ROMANCE: the ALPHA, the OMEGA, and the BETA. Each plays a different role within the individual romantic unit that makes up one satyr relationship, called a HARRAS, and each contributes to the success of that harras in different ways. Satyrs tend to colloquially refer to this relationship schema as A/O/B instead of calling it SATYR ROMANCE, because that would be dumb.

Ah, using A/O/B instead of the typical arrangement dodges the accidental-slur of putting them in ⍺/β/⍵ order. I imagine "HARRAS" is a... *looks it up* yeah it's just a horse pun. Defined "a herd of stud horses [or] enclosure for a herd of stud horses". For a moment I thought it might have to do with hazing and the fraternity puns, but no it's not that kind of "harassment", and I wonder if they even have that word in the same sense now.

The role of the ALPHA can be summed up as the role of the LEADER. The alpha of a harras is expected to guide, lead, and protect the partnership. Alphas were traditionally expected to act as representatives of the harras in society at large. Traits traditionally considered alpha are assertiveness, decorum, and gravitas.

I'm not really deep enough into anything Omegaverse to clock exactly how in line these explanations are going to be compared to typical Omegaverse roles, by the way.

The role of the OMEGA can be summed up as the role of the CHALLENGER. An omega exists as a galvanizing force within his harras that keeps it from calcifying, provoking his partners and daring them not to become too comfortable, ensuring that ideas and power flow freely between its members. Traits traditionally considered omega are indomitability, creativity, and spontaneity.

But that DOES seem a little different than the typical definitions even to my untrained eye, isn't it? And I'm also noticing that all of these traits for EACH of these could be said to be characteristics of Dirk Strider that he values. Out of our trio of Satyrs by the way, this does seem to suit TC and his background machinations, especially how he sets up and provokes them. He IS sort of leading them from the background though... he's serving as the outward face of the team to outside forces. I wonder how TC sees his place in things.

The role of the BETA is best understood as the role of the SUPPORTER. A beta is there to ensure the needs of his harrasmates are met, to lift their spirits when they're down, to most fully exemplify the masculine bond that the harras stays together for. Betas were something of an interesting outlier in traditional A/O/B relationships of a more classical era, as they were not expected to participate in the sexual aspect of the relationship, functioning more analogously to the housewife you cherish and happily return home to, without the pressures of coitus, but this is an artifact that history has left behind in modernity. Traits traditionally considered beta are adaptability, supportiveness, and steadfastness.

(More ending traits that Dirk believes he represents.) Swiss Elysi seems a natural fit for this sort of role the way he's been behaving so far. However, CT / The Mountain seems... somewhat if not completely uninterested as serving as the Leader or the face of his trio of friends? He tends to go with the flow unless he's sufficiently challenged, so far at least, and in the few interactions we've seen doesn't seem intent on dictating or guiding the behavior of others. Maybe their conflicting urges and natures are leading to something like, ⍺/β vacillation between Swiss and The Mountain? And whether or not that's true, I wonder exactly how the introduction of the Nymphs and Candy Kids are going to throw a wrench in their romantic array? Could someone assertive like Yiffy or Vrissy fill the assertiveness gap and serve a stint as an Alpha one or more of the others get behind? Heck, would Yiffy/Tavvy/Mountain seem to fit the ⍺/β/⍵ mold temporarily or otherwise, leaving the others hanging? And where would trans Del'Fi fall on the spectrum in whichever relationships they choose to enter?

Oh, also important to note that within modern Satyr civilization the entire trio of an established relationship is eventually sexually active with each other, sharing DNA et cetera, and the Beta isn't left out.

The classical satyrical ideal of a harras consists of three men – one alpha, one omega, and one beta – but it's important to note a few things. Firstly, although the romanticized ideal of an A/O/B relationship remains popular in modern society, it is quite common to see relationships comprised of any number of different combinations of roles: one might encounter a relationship between two alphas and a beta, three betas, an alpha and an omega without a beta, three omegas… the possibilities continue from there.

Ohhh, that is a more flexible and modern take than I expected. And complicates much of the romantic speculation to high hell, heheh.

Secondly, the role one plays in a harras is potentially fluid: one's status as an alpha, beta, or omega is defined solely by their behavior within the harras, and is subject to change should the dynamics between individuals in a harras shift.

Canonical healthy vacillation even in an established harras! That's very open-minded and even more complicated.

While it's quite common to hear someone say something along the lines of a given satyr being "a born alpha", it's not to say that one's role in a harras is at all inherent to any particular aspect of their biology, because that would be dumb.

Right, nixing that characteristic of certain other Omegaverse fiction in this particular situation.

Things get even crazier and more complicated from there when you consider the sexual politics of all this. One could be forgiven for thinking that an alpha equates to what you'd consider a "dom" where sex is concerned; not so. You could have dom alphas, sub alphas, service top betas, switch omegas, hung bottom omegas, feral omegas… just the thought of it is enough to make the nose bleed. The beauty of this system is that every role, every FLAVOR of role, is so clearly delineated.

That's definitely a riff on like, Omegaverse role quizzes that delineate all sorts of sub-roles like, (what comes up on a quick google...) Stoic Omega, Submissive Alpha, or-- wait did they slip "hung" in there? XD

Oh, no fucking wonder Karkat is immediately paying rapt attention.

> FASCINATING… CAN YOU CLARIFY ONE MORE THING FOR ME?

Whoa hell that's cool! More hacks/hexes that can affect the user on the other end of a computer, please!!! :D Extending Rose's classic magic-flexing moment with more flexibility and possibilities.

(Amusingly, Karkat and Jake are being forcibly tied together, not tied up separately heheh. Those are Jake's new Retro-Sci-Fi Rubber/Latex Gloves, not a Carapace's hands, by the way. OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT, "Binding" people is an excellent Blood player ability! If she's a Bard too it's an especially perfect fit. (EDIT 3: Cast with a HAND of all things, and an injury! Gosh more Hand symbolism with Blood potentially...))

Nope! You cast a RETALIATORY BINDING CURSE to ensure you won't be hearing from those bickering beldams any time soon. You never thought you'd actually miss the silence down here. Still, you're glad you got to spread the A/O/B gospel while you finished these prompts.

Glad to have gotten an explanation this upd8! I wasn't expecting the full Satyr rundown this soon, and it's bound to present TONS of opportunities for analysis of where each character in the potential relationships here is falling (and with whom!) as Beyond Canon continues, which is both hilarious and fun. You know I love me some Romspec.

Seems they've given themselves a little bit more time to complete whichever they picked from the Suggestion Thread for the internal Beyond Canon comic. Can't wait to find out next time what we'll be getting and speculate endlessly on the way they chose to depict their silly slapstick comic! If it continues in the theme of the "Door", as fitting a Bard of Blood author, we may get continued displays of relationships or meetings failing to coalesce or going wrong-- when it's almost as if Del'fi's foreseeing the future and showing us the contrary opposite of Blood bonds that WILL find each other. I still really hope that the fact that Del'fi showed Terezi and Vriska failing to meet through that knocking door was a Bard of Blood's contrary proof that we WOULD, crossing-my-fingers, have Terezi and Vriska finally meeting that way... though it could very well be a missed opportunity Del'fi foresaw and was compelled to depict. Funny that AA is the least Oracle of all of them so far!

Alright, enough blabbing. I'll see you... well, probably in a day or two for the Artist and Writer Commentaries.

EDIT: There was some Q&A at the NYCStuck live update, and according to info from @dcmcboxers there are a couple extra tidbits to share on Satyr romance/society:

Any satyr in a relationship can become pregnant and the role has a certain amount of prestige attached to it. This is the longest time any satyr spends with their child before they're given up to be raised communally.

Satyrs do not know their direct lineage and it's seen as egotistical to try and track it down. It's frowned upon for parents to seek out their child as well.

Satyr society has been unified as one government for a long time but this is after ages of warring states (very feudal Japan).

(Do check out the start of that Artist/Writer Commentary reaction link if you didn't already, because I covered important stuff I'd missed such as the substantial Jake <3< Karkat evidence. Also, regarding the Beyond Canon Hero Titles post, I won't be editing it to add more evidence as we go because it's literally too big for Tumblr to let me edit, with too many hyperlinks et cetera, so if evidence evolves substantially I'll have to make an ADDENDUM repost or something.)

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Ooh, it looks like we're getting the Beyond Canon inside Beyond Canon updates finally!

Can we run it back on the prison break?

Classic. Notable that Vriska and Dirk are together though.

Oh my goodness that's almost everyone! Well, not everyone. Referring back to the Artist Commentary for when the inner comic appeared, that's (left to right first row) Callie, Vriska on Dirk, Jane Crocker, (2nd row left to right) Jake English, Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde, and Karkat.

So about half the cast, as John, Terezi, Roxy, and Kanaya are missing from the scene out of the ones we received sneak previews of the character designs for.

((EDIT: I'd assumed the blast was where I vividly remembered the Pumpkin exploding in a prior Jailbreak, but that never happened. I have no idea where I got that idea. We've had how many editions of Jailbreak, like Jack Noir's reprise in Act 6 (there was a transportalizer there)? Which one had an exploded pumpkin? None! I must be misremembering. At least it's not smelly pee mud or a pumpkin burial site. Well, it might be one of those things. See also potential note about Nymph Kanaya being missing at the bottom of this post.))

Anyway, Vriska rears up "Ride." style and:

Jane looks so done, even in doodle form, I love it. I shouldn't post all the images due to the upload limit, so Jane holds up a card hand and:

Oh, those are Vriska's dice thrown at her! Del'fi even knows about that! Vriska pumps her fist.

Jane gambling Vriska for the Dirk she found and captured.

That's a very interesting user suggestion, and I wonder if it'll have any actual relevance regarding Vriska and Dirk's interactions in comic. I had to assume earlier that they either wouldn't run directly into each other, or would perhaps remotely agree to a tenuous ceasefire to not act directly in the session and let their wards sort it out so as to not cause a huge ruckus with direct battle. Vriska has at LEAST learned not to go fight the Big Bad on her own again, if nothing else.

Then Dave is riding Jake and crying as Jane and Vriska keep gambling away.

Rose should kill karkat, leading Dave falling into the arms(?) of Jake

That whole sequence above seems like great bait for a Bard of Blood to have drawn, just gonna say. I don't think the user suggestion spawned comic options they chose here will for sure cause canon events, but, they can definitely be referenced, or be closer to what will happen than we might be comfortable with. This could definitely be used to just threaten us with the possibility of Rose threatening Karkat's life later, with the foreshadowing making the possibility seem more serious to us whether or not it gets fully executed.

Terezi splats Calliope opening up the door, Dirk turns to her while she's holding something behind her back...

Terezi reveals a dark secret

Judging by Jailbreak, is that pron?

Dirk learns about My Little Person

Scandalous!!!!!!

Splatted Callie is still alive (EDIT 3: Since I forgot to mention it, her shirt symbol is an upside down red version of her skull-head with X'd out eyes, meaning Caliborn is dead both literally and in influence on her), the window explodes, Roxy slips in as a snake-like Nymph shadow to ride Dirk, wave cutely to Rose and then:

Rose and Roxy Dramatic Wizard Battle. There are casualties.

Riding their respective steeds yes. Interesting to have Roxy colored RED and wielding red magic, almost AA-colored and looking like... actually auguryAside's Naglink avatar has a mostly gray hat. So, maybe there's some bleedover to how Del'fi thinks of AA or maybe not; maybe Roxy still has another fashion change to be red to contrast Callie's green ahead of us.

Roxy magically summons...

Oh what the actual fuck. Gamzee?! Aranea?! Some abominable fusion? She orders him off and:

"Nymph" Gamzee: Reject your role as the living weapon

Ohh, not only is he a "fake" Nymph wearing a stitched together Upper Organon, he's split along the head and organon in two as per how he was bisected and half of him went into Lord English back how the Stage-End fight unfolded in Homestuck.

Rose counters by summoning a... what the fuck?

That's a bust of... or maybe even a robo-bust of... someone I can't begin to guess with my bad-at-recognizing-celebrities brain.

What the hell is this prompt with a roleplayed typing quirk? Did a user come up with it or the team in whole cloth?

This has got to be like... a classic movie reference to a robot dude or something. I don't know who this user(?) is referencing. Maybe they even put their own OC in, I'm stumped. (EDIT 3: It's a real user submission, I can see why they had to put it in. Actually multiple posts.)

Callie walks out into the dark, and finds...!!!

Aradia, alt!Calliope (AL) and RoboDave! Wait... I thought Dave had a shackle around him just for JailBreak flavor, why does Ultimate Dave have four robo-shackles around him? Is there going to be some moratorium Dirk Strider imposes on Time Travel around Deltritus, or inside/outside the session? Something to lock down the incoming Meat Ship from interfering with how Deltritus's session unfolded and launched outside of the Exile Terminals would make a large degree of sense. Also, very interesting that regular Meat Dave is a Pegatulp but RoboDave is an Alkyrin. Aradia is an Alkyrin too... that means Alkyrin equates to Ultimate Self for Del'fi's imagination.

Well, "not dead" is sort of debatable, I'm honestly not sure. AL's sure been hauntin' bodies.

What is that weapon she's given Aradia? A whip, like her old specibus? One of Dave's turntables? Hard to tell in doodle style other than it's Red Spiral-y. ((EDIT 4: Someone pointed out it might be a black whip with a red glow, making more sense of the hand positions. Perhaps even the BQ/Snowman’s Black Inches then.))

Hilarious. I'm glad Del'fi's glad.

Dirk: Trot in a little circle.

hee hee

(Does this mean he's working to keep the two of them apart though? There was some artistic liberty in interpreting that command to have them both onscreen between him before the trot... maybe that's not insignificant...)

Dirk: Tenderly lick saltblock

heheheheheh

((EDIT 4: In this frame Vriska walking towards Terezi while Dirk is distracted is in the background, potentially indicating that he’d have to be distracted from narratively causing them not to meet before they can reunite. That or this whole thing is just another tease and the reunite at that door that was knocking is already happening, soon to be in our perspective next intermission or addendum, we can’t be sure.))

Lasso'd?!

Interesting color scheme on Nymph John Egbert! I haven't been able to discern a clear rhyme or reason to why certain people are Nymphs and certain are Satyrs other than the fun it'd be to draw them that way, much less some of these off-colors besides Vriska's renewed ties to Red.

((EDIT 3: Thanks again to @coinagefission - the yellow is from the poison Golden Tooth still embedded in the middle of Meat John's body! As best seen in this frame I'd previously omitted--))

John pulls Dirk close and:

"Ok BYE." Yeah, I guess she'd lose patience with that. Being a Yaoi fan doesn't mean you don't have your own tastes-- and/or what with June and all, maybe Del'fi senses it wouldn't be proper BL! I'm kind of surprised that there weren't more m/m relationships in this upd8 but Del'fi IS only SECRETLY the Beyond Anon and I got the sense that they're keeping their tastes at bay to avoid giving themselves away to the likes of Ly'lac.

Having finished the sketches, you immediately post them to your website so you don't have to look at them anymore. In truth, you're glad to be rid of them... you almost regret asking in the first place. You guess you shouldn't be such a jerk about it, and you're sure the fans are just happy to be able to interact with the comic in this way, but is this seriously what they want to see? This is barely any better than the stuff you were posting to deliberately piss them off! Predictably, your readers immediately start eating it up. Sometimes you despair for art.

Yes, we are very grateful.

And that's the end of the upd8. What have we learned? Uh... well, Alkyrins carry a similar connotation to Ultimate Selves (aside from hornse Dirk), some further suggestion that Aradia is an Ultimate Self too (even though she basically said so, "we are both an infinite number of years old living countless lifetimes at once") and Aradia might be alchemizing/getting a cool whip back or some other artifact/weapon before she enters the fray (even if just as a mundane weapon), and... well, other than that, not much of consequence! Just a bunch of silly stuff to be referenced later, or not. It was a pretty fun exercise with the community regardless!

I feel there could be a crumb of something in John (June) Egbert being a wrench in Dirk Strider's plans, but we knew that going into this, the lasso bit is just Del'fi being bonus prophetic. Practically a given. And those Ball-and-Chain (Blood??? Maybe???) shackles around Dave and RoboDave are... I'd be surprised if those ended up representing nothing, that's going to mean something but we probably can't guess exactly what, unless it's my No Time Travel Allowed Zone narrative restriction guess. If not that... hmm.

((EDIT: Also, Kanaya is the only one missing from the full set of people we've had depicted in the Artist Commentary preview, start to end, and there's a scorchmark near the window, so maybe that's an ominous sign especially since it wasn't in anyone's suggestion. I'm not sure how well it would serve the plot for such a thing to happen, unless it was an Aradiabot-like fakeout where Kanaya only appeared to die because she's going to Quest Crypt ascend circumstantially simultaneously?))

((EDIT 2: Thanks to @coinagefission - Jade was missing from both this entire set of events *AND* the Artist Commentary of the "characters of Beyond Canon" inside Beyond Canon! One possibility is that Jade is bound to be excluded because AL, alt!Calliope, intends to be possessing her while she's in range of Dirk's narrative sphere to counter him. (At least until she arrives in her other body with RoboDave and Aradia?) Another is that she's represented derogatorily by Yaoi fan Del'fi as the gay Dave's "ball and chain" (unwanted wife), and RoboDave has had multiple lives with multiple Jades... unsure what to believe of the absence for sure though. There are further Jade is Dave's Balls (heh) theories on the Forums which detail that Ultimate Dave has known four Jade Harleys onscreen (Meat, Candy, Pre-Retcon, and Masterpiece (AL's current body)) who he may have unresolved issues over weighing him down (Blood), or even might suggest a more literal way Meat Jade is trapped or neutralized besides AL, and points out Dave hit his head on the ball and died (which I missed). Again, though, we are viewing through Del'fi specific bias here and for a gay male character to be held back at all by a straight paramour does make sense to me as being derogatorily depicted by Del'fi as weighing him down, so I can't be sure one way or another.))

One more administrative note: I know the first five tags count for everything on Tumblr, so should I move one of them out for "Beyond Canon", even maybe the main Homestuck tag so it doesn't spam people who aren't readers of HS:BC? Or do you think it's fine as-is? And should I replace the occasional "Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵" tag with "Satyrical A/O/B" to fit the comic's new nomenclature and make it so I don't have to copy/paste those unicode symbols all the time? Or keep it fancy?

But before we get started I wanted to outline three potential theories for the thematic reasoning behind Swiss Elysi's always-left-facing "<==]-" sword-with-smile-and-horn-variants emoji quirk, the first I'd already outlined and another two creditable to others' excellent ideas.

First there was the Light-accumulating guess I made in my 2025-10-13 liveblogging, presumably suitable for a class like an Heir, annotations in square brackets:

Did Swiss just use part of a sword emote as a smile emote? That’s adorbs. It’s probably significant that Swiss’s sword emote of choice contains a “==>” in it, one of the most significant symbols in Homestuck. [Importance = Light] It IS consistently pointing backwards though (<==) the way he uses it. Is that meant to point at himself sorta? Like an aggrandization point where important events [Light] are meant to converge on him?

Second is from user coinagefission in Taz's Discord Server (optimisticDuelist) which I've only just begun to visit, a fresh change of pace when I have the bandwidth because usually I only rely on the addendums, theories and suppositions that y'all send in directly to this blog from yourselves or elsewhere, or direct friends do directly:

I submit that when taking into account Swiss’ awful opinions on nymphs and general worldview, the fact that his sword emoji faces that way isn't meant to point at his handle specifically it’s Go Back “Go Back” in direct opposition to homestuck’s insistent “Forward”

This'll be especially true if as he joins the Game, Swiss continues to be a... recidivist? No no, what's the word... conservative? Traditionalist? Someone who wants to stubbornly cling to the past glory of Satyr history instead of moving forward. ;) Arrows are critically important Homestuck symbols especially when they have only two equals signs, but they've always had even greater Time significance-- We should keep a hard eye on the direction of his emotes because they've pointed CONSISTENTLY leftward without exception so far, and if he starts pointing any rightward/forward later, it could indicate character growth and a willingness to evolve with the new situation and new world.

However, my favorite is probably this third one, from Tumblr user @hellstobetsy in my Inbox:

I can't help but notice that Swiss is visually all about Julius Caesar (betrayed and killed by his best friend, via knife to the back), his handle is named after Agamemnon (betrayed and killed by his wife), and that one of his quirks is making ASCII daggers pointing at his own name, most notably on page 893 where he posts an ascii knife at TC and a drawn out "HIT. ME. BACK." Could this be just TC making the game, or do you think he'll literally kill Swiss? Sorry for the second ask but I only just now realized that "Swiss" is the type of cheese famous for having holes in it. I think our beekeeper's getting stung pretty bad at some point. <==]-

I'm sure the manipulative TC is one of the most liable to get Swiss killed if nobody else, possibly even to get Swiss to God-Tier, but the idea of Swiss's theming and very typing quirk being advanced foreshadowing of someone filling Swiss with the swords of betrayal (literally or metaphorically) is frankly delicious.

Keep in mind that more than one of these definitions can coexist; Homestuck is fond of exploiting multiple meanings of layered puns, especially when it comes to anything approaching Aspect symbology or foreshadowing, and Beyond Canon hasn't disappointed much since their team has taken up the mantle. So for example, my Light-accumulation idea and HellsToBetsy's Julius Caesar idea could both be intended.

Anyway, on to the upd8 and its very likely to be subverted next-page title:

> Swiss: Revel in tranquility.

You are not Swiss. And revelry is about the furthest thing from your mind.

HOLY FUCKING PERSPECTIVE CHANGE OMG :D

So the Nymphs ARE almost certainly all Derse dreamers (unless Ly'lac's Doom aspect lets her pull a Sollux and have both), and the Satyrs are Prospit dreamers, to throw the Dirk=Prospit=Orange=Light vs Rose=Derse=Purple=Void broader conflict into starkest contrast!! She did always SEEM like a Derse dreamer type, my only distant doubt of that before now had been that Ly'lac has been said to be our John-analogue for the Delta Players and is our likely first entrant / Player One, and we've never STARTED with a Derse dreamer before.

Except, something's wrong with the outfit. Why is it glowing so brightly? It doesn't look like dark purple standard Dersewear, it looks like Jasprosesprite^2's blinding white-pink variant. Compare with above:

Freeze-frame on the pinkest in the gif:

And Ly'lac's Derse Princess outfit is even PINKER AND BRIGHTER. Her dark Nymph skin color isn't even an excuse, as Troll Derse clothing never lightened to contrast their gray skin, nor did the dark aura around Dream Rose as Rose accumulated Grimdark power in their initial session change her outfit.

If we were right about this potentially being the session where Satyrs and Nymphs first CREATE THE GAME, fusing their technology and magic(/alchemy)... then it's very possible this is our first sign that the session is gonna be weeeird. Potentially unfinished, or potentially STRANGELY more complicated.

===>

Something is whispering to you.

Good spritework. GOD that's an eye-searingly bright outfit; those look like normal zero-prototyped Dersians though (I cross-referenced with Act 6 pre-entry Prospitans from Dream Jane's funeral dream, though I could have been more thorough).

Is this really Ly'lac's first time Waking Up on Derse? Not TOO surprising since it appears more likely as the Game approaches if Act 6 is anything to go by, but I guess all Ly'lac had to do was get exploded the fuck out of her house. Which is definitely not the first time she's ever exploded herself.

What's whispering to her? The Voice, the Horrorterrors if Derse is at max orbit, or yet a different voice she has to contend with now?

Also why isn't she in her tower, if she has one-- oh, duh. If she was thrown out of her tower-house, maybe she was Dream-thrown out of her Dream-tower too.

If something's whispering to her, are they the ones issuing these commands or her, because I can't think of who else but her would ask this:

> Where the hell is this?

YET MORE of a confirmation that we have 10 players. Three Nymphs, three Satyrs and four Candy Kids-- five Derse Dreamers and five Prospit Dreamers.

Ly'lac indeed exploded herself out of her Dream tower too-- I forget if there is any correlation between Tower Order and player entry order. If anyone else could validate this I'd be grateful.

Also... is it just me, or just a rendering artifact from this image being scaled down... or on full-size view and zoom-in are the middle and right towers conspicuously more color-saturated than the other three? As if the human Derse Dreamers' towers might look different from the (presumably all) Nymph ones? ...It's probably just a reduction rendering artifact.

===>

Now who the fuck harpooned a gray rope directly up to Ly'lac's explosion hole while she was knocked out? That was fast. It has to have been one of the Midnight Crew who can't fly, right? Don't their towers have stairs up though!? (Unless Ly'lac sleep-booby-trapped her DREAM stairs with explosives too, which come to think of it, she almost certainly did.) Her Dreamself can fly, so there's no possible reason the explosion would have made her create a harpoon route down even if she was sleepwalking down to where she woke, and it seems carefully shot to reach the still-smoking-last-panel EXPLODED section moreso than her naturally-open Derse window. This is a very immediate and important mystery.

===>

Oh shit, she got distacted from the harpoon-rope mystery. Dammit, Ly'lac! You're supposed to be paranoid of intruders!!

I can't admit I don't badly want to know this too though. It'd be funny if this were our first glimpse at a new Nymph:

> Ly'lac: Examine other rooms.

OH she's just peeking in to barely tease us the silhouettes-- aaaaand that's a hoofed leg sticking up. So, could be CC's cosplay, nymph-shapeshifting or imagination, or it could be CT from the color, throwing off my Derse-Nymphs theory. "Love Rivine", who's that? Searching it up it could apparently mean maiden / young lady, derived from root words for a bank or river (which would make it Nymph-connected) or could be a language variant of "Devine" (similarity of which to Divine would make it like Elysi (Elysium), a potential Satyr surname). So... a poster of a Satyr (based on a celebrity I'm sure SOMEBODY recognizes and can tell me in the replies) ((EDIT: I'm DUMB for misreading it, the R is a D, it's Divine, the famous drag queen (my friend V mentions "Lady Divine is also the inspiration for Ursula's character design in The Little Mermaid (animated), which may have some interesting nymph-y connotations")-- I think this all including the drag bit (and how V reminded me The Little Mermaid includes transforming to go from Sea to Land) increases the chance this is CC's room... also check more we figured out in the Replies to this post)) likely sent to CT by CC, or CC by CT, signed by either the depicted celebrity or by one of them? Ly'lac looks mildly confused seeing whoever it is or their room. (Wait I have to keep remembering that her Upper Organon eyes aren't eyebrows. COMPLETELY unrelated by the way, someone I was scrolling past made the point that the six spinal INTENDOCRINE glands of Satyr Stallions correspond to all of the Chakras EXCEPT the seventh chakra ((that image practically reminds me of the Sburb spirograph and a flower simultaneously!)) corresponding to enlightenment / higher consciousness, which could be said to correspond with the Upper Organons of Nymphs. I thought that was a cool insight someone else put together, who was it... oh it was coinagefission in Taz's server again who mentioned it!)

Gosh, we're only a handful of pages in and this upd8 has had me opening SO many goddamn tabs. Searches, wikis, past Homestuck and Beyond Canon pages, switching over to Discord, etc. ...There's no way we're getting a deeper peek in this room yet are we, we'll be left with the silhouette teaser and move immediately on, I just KNOW it. (One more thing-- reading back up from the next page, this person is on a BED, not in a Clam, so if it's CC and not CT, they are seriously dedicated to their cosplay/transnymphhood.)

===>

THAT'S A CLAM, NOT A BED! Ly'lac's clearly happy to see this person so points in favor of it being auguryAside. Weird statues but would be an obvious gift from any Satyr friend, or any Satyr interests the Nymph has... is that Satyr Ryu?

Oh my GOSH the next one is an [S] page, it HAS to be her peeking in on one of the Candy Kids' dreamselves (I hope). Time to see at least one of their alignments (I hope), I've been too afraid to guess!!!

> [S] Ly'lac: Look.

...... HECK YES IT'S VRISSY MARYAM-LALONDE! Bucking the trend of Vriska's moon alignment too, not just her classpect! Cute Mother Grub doll she's sleeping with! All to Ly'lac's obvious mild shock, possibly at being so close to her friend Vrissy or possibly having never having seen one of her species at all depending on whether Vrissy ever sent pics (I'd find it odd if she didn't), much less seen one in-person. (On rewatch-- Vrissy has a NORMAL-COLORED Derse Dreamer outfit (and so does her doll), meaning the blindingly bright pink Derse Dreamer outfits are at minimum a uniquely Nymph thing! How come?? Too many possible reasons to know for now, thematic or otherwise (with the overarching Rose/Dirk conflict, the Nymphs' ties to Horrorterrors and/or a Light-player creator, etc), even just aesthetic artistic fiat to clash less for all we can guess.)

Wait what now? Zoom out to the Horrorterrors... is this who or what was whispering to you?

A particular dream bubble, freshly-blown and still in a Horror's grip? Nymphs would be especially attuned to these... she's looking up and zooming into the dream like many Derse Dreamers have seen from a distance--

...and we see the giant Monohorn (Alkyrin horn? Unicorn horn or Uninymph horn?) from the dream of another sleeping player (unless Dirk?), rising behind her and above her head at once, whinnying noises in the background.

AAAND the upd8's over. Holy shit!!!!